Next Homecoming
by shoxxic
Summary: She plucks bolts instead of flowers. Flowers don't last very long, anyway.


**Notes**—for **AuburnCollision**, because I think I said I would write you some FMA a while ago (aka I think I still owe you, aka this kind of sucks and I'll stop with all the science references some day). Some other notes: character sketch, done by memory, manga/Brotherhood centric.

* * *

She spends a summer under the warning sun running soft fingers over cracked text. The print is still crisp—fashioned with clipped adjectives and hasty, handwritten notes bleeding in the margins. She breathes in lost ink and imagines an empirical dissection of the typeface to each alphabet letter. The words are sophisticated and clinical and assuming, and she is far too young to understand.

She pulls out her notebook and copies a line before peering into the circulatory system and mapping the relationship between oxygen and blood flow. Ribbons of blue and red. They coexist, she learns. One doesn't exist without the other. And jots down another note.

Sometime later, she pulls out a separate piece of unlined paper and writes, _Guess what I learned today?_ and smiles to herself before folding the paper up and tucking it into an envelope and smacking it with wax. The sun dips. She washes her hands clean, catches her reflection through the looking glass and smiles, hums, again.

She is far too young for this.

* * *

This is now.

This is one letter she never even gets the chance to send.

* * *

It only really hurts the first time, honest.

The second time, she is older, steadier, and more efficient. Maybe not any _wiser_, really, but more conscious and more willing. Ready. Her hands are already soaped soft and ready for ruin. She twists the sterilized needle between her pale fingers and plots with mathematical precision. Breathes in slow against the glass.

And rips through her skin.

She studies her reflection in the mirror and tries not to look too weak. The blood drips onto glossy sink counter anyway. Pulsation. Circulation. Everything is changing, rearranging—numb, soft, hungry, black, and she loses sight for almost a full minute.

When she can see again, she can feel the plate of the earring stud set hard against her flushed, raw flesh.

* * *

There is no smell to metal alone.

But when the byproducts of metal atoms react with human skin lipids, oxidation occurs. Somewhere between all this largely unobserved electron transfer, a "metallic" odor is produced.

But smell is really only an accumulation of experience. She gets used to the bitter metallic smell fast. In the beginning, she'd been so lost and shattered and confused and _how could something like that even _happen. She had the kind of face that'd been easy to read, but she has cried even more than she had been able to confess. The process hadn't taken long, though. She's never been any good at inaction or staying in one place for long. She discards her liquid salt and tucks her biology illustrations under her bed—trades it all for something more real.

Something tangible.

Something she can cling onto.

She takes in the fresh smell of all the metals—and breathes out.

Ed snickers. "Automail freak," he says.

She throws a wrench at his head without skipping a beat. "Shrimp."

"Hey—!"

"Winry!"

Later, there is more banter and laughter and dinner, and she subconsciously brushes a soft hand against her ears. The metal-plated studs and hoops glimmer under the lights.

* * *

The sixth is the last. The black had already edged out, and the only reminder now is the physical. She slides a finger along the curved back edge of her flushed left ear, and another along the smooth, steel automail she'd just assembled just a half hour earlier.

Beautiful, she thinks.

But the weight of both is unavoidable. Maybe they'll burden her down one day. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe she'll never even know.

* * *

She is no stranger to metal anymore, but the pistol in her hand is foreign, and _heavy_, and loaded with promise.

She now knows everything and nothing. The truth is nothing like she'd ever imagined.

She can't feel a thing anymore.

The man with the scar peeled raw across his face just looks at her, guarded. His expression is not quite one of pity yet not quite one of conflict either.

But.

"Shoot me," he says. He doesn't wait long for a sufficient reaction to develop. "You're justified—I was the one responsible for your parents' death."

Instinct. She trembles, aims.

"But if you do," he continues, the crimson of his eyes hard as gemstones, and nods at the gun. He doesn't pretty up his words. "The minute you pull that trigger, I'll treat you as my enemy. Take your revenge or get the hell out of here."

Her hands are unsteady. Distantly, she can hear Ed, and Al, but she doesn't really _hear _them—can barely even see them. It all happens too fast, and she is lost all over again. Memories roll through her mind, like some harsh, gasping film of make-believe and black and white photography; images that sink in red. She starts to feel the weight of the handgun—and then nothing. Everything blurs.

This is just too much.

She had never imagined a reality like this.

She cannot let go and she cannot shoot.

* * *

She's still shaking. She can't look at her hands anymore, but she can't quite look away either. Her eyes sting.

"I couldn't do it... I couldn't do it, even if he—my parents—"

Breaks.

"It's okay. Remember the baby? And my arm? You were meant to help people."

And then everything.

"Your hands—they weren't meant for killing."

* * *

She hadn't been looking for it in particular, but it's been a while. Maybe she should have done this sooner. She cuts at the boxes and shifts through them: presents, old clothes, hair accessories. She should have labeled them. A crisp sheet of lined paper falls out. She picks it up and reads in her own painstaking handwriting: _the human body is undeniable_.

The illustrations had been smudged and proportionally incorrect. She traces at the veins, at all the chalky (untouchable) red and blue slipping into each other and remembers. They coexist—one can't exist without the other. She finds her letters next, breaks the wax apart to get to the substance underneath. Her handwriting is even more trigonometric here, with words graphed in respect to perpendicular lines and spacial sensitivity. _I'll be waiting_—

She stuffs the sheets into a notebook and stacks the boxes, slides them out of sight just as the sun finally dips.

She'd let go once before. She does it again now.

* * *

This is neither a beginning nor an ending.

"Don't forget to take care of your automail every day."

"Gotcha."

"Clean it _really _well after you shower."

"Uh huh."

She thinks hard. "And _please_ try not to ruin it so quickly. Oh—also, don't forget to make an appointment before you come too, while you're at it."

"Will do."

The train comes and goes. She rubs her hands together.

_"I'll give you more than half my life."_

* * *

It's only for a day—just one day—but she takes out all her earrings and lines them up neatly in a row on the porch. The sun hits at them, and they glimmer under the lights. She runs her fingers along her naked ears, feels for the soft holes she created, and the bones she's cut through. Milestones and memories. Metal is something that lasts.

Metal. Oxidation. Reduction. There are bonds—bonds that form when different substances come in contact with each other. They're not permanent or created equally. Some hold out longer and stronger than others; most rearrange.

The wind picks up. She scoops up the bits of silver in her hands, closes her fist.

And doesn't let go.


End file.
